Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

ATM the biggest problem for LRAD is cost, you fire a $12K Patriot missile to intercept what is either a $40 million jet or a $300 drone. This is revolutionary.

Is this going to be less than $12K? Looks pretty expensive to me.

$12k Patriot missile? You are off a couple whole orders of magnitude.

A single patriot missile is estimated to cost $4 million USD

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/patriot-missile-ukraine-explain...

Are you saying this fills a niche?

Aren’t they using guns to fight cheap drones, at least for cities in Ukraine ? Eg Gepard.

Directed energy (laser) will solve this issue, so that Patriots are only engaged for expensive planes, while lasers will destroy drones and cheap ballistic rockets

and the drones are apparently $50k not $300!

They will not solve this issue because laser weapons will not work when light is defracted (fog, heavy clouds, rain), and they will not work against targets beyond the horizon. It's not a technology hurdle, it's a physics impossibility.

Interceptor missiles are here to stay. Lasers will accompany them but never replace.

No, lasers will not be a sufficient defense against ballistic missiles. Lasers require time to burn through the target. With ballistic missiles, they're facing a target traveling 5+ times the speed of sound (ie. little time), that also has heat shielding on the bit that's facing the target. Not to mention adverse weather conditions. And missiles w

Lasers will, however, be very effective at SHORAD, especially against cheap drones, rockets, artillery shells and cruise missiles, in the proper conditions. Iron Beam is projected to cost $0.50-$1.00 in electricity per shot, compared to a $50-60k Iron Dome interceptor missile (which is already insanely cheap for what it is).

There is still benefit in shooting laser at a speed of light, instead of a guided rocket which travels at 2-3 Machs at best.

2 machs is ~0.686 km/s - vs 300k km/s for laser.

and laser can be mounted on a plane, which makes it even more dangerous for air2air combat

Gepard is a specialized anti-air vehicle with a radar and pretty expensive shells. Very effective and cheaper than Patriot/NASAMS/IRIS-T missiles, but not really cheap. It’s mainly used on the outskirts of big cities, AFAIK.

When intercepting drones and rockets in a middle of nowhere, what’s often used is a regular machine gun that’s mounted on a pickup truck.

What goes up must come down, including the unexploded ordnance these systems produce. Not ideal for use in populated environments.

Lasers won't really be used in A2A, except for maybe intercepting missiles and drones.

There's not really any A2A going on anymore within visual range.

Ukraine is using everything that they can get their hands on - regardless of how effective it actually is.

Gepards have pretty short range in comparison to any missile system.

Maybe it’s a Black Friday deal.

At that price, even I would buy one!

Iron Dome missiles reportedly cost $60k, and that is considered cheap.

The better AA autocanon shells actually have a timed airburst fuze (set at firing time!) so only small fragments should be raining down (for non-dud shells).

You speak with certainty, when you clearly have little knowledge on the topic.

Stealth aircraft are immune to targeting radar guided lock except at quite close range. IR missiles are better, but are generally not BVR.

Also, at high altitude “within laser range” could be at “BVR” type ranges, e.g. over eighty km.

You can (in theory) guide an air-to-air missile in at that range remotely using an optical targeting pod on the launching fighter, it's generally more risky though because you can't immediately break contact like you can with a Meteor for example. Meteor is highly resistant to ECM however, and a remote guided missile might not be. In all cases however, any laser system you can power on a fighter jet (assuming current and near future technology) will not be able to target a manned or unmanned fighter jet in a way that a remote guided missile system can't. A laser system could be useful for close range defense.